A qualitative study of the relationships between the knowledge and behaviour of coaches in two football academies in Malaysia

The formation of the Football Academy in Malaysia was seen as the best possible way to develop young footballers, through a decentralized programme with the aim to provide a strong base for many players who are sound and strong and to produce an individual player who can reach world class standard. With the problem of performance of the Malaysia national football team, which has been considerably affected by problems relating to the knowledge of coaching and behaviour of the football coaches in the coaching process, the study of the academy football coaches in Malaysia was conducted to offer some possible ways to address the issues facing the coaching profession in Malaysia. It is significant to study the academy coaches since the football academies are expected to play a prominent role in producing quality players for the states, national and international teams. The study applied a qualitative methodology to explore the unique features and circumstances surrounding the football academy coaches and players in the context of this study and the major sources of data include the interview, observation and documentation analysis. Subsequently, the findings of this study revealed that i) the development of knowledge of coaching has taken place in the academy but constrained by factors involving the coach education programme at the academy level; ii) the weaknesses of the coaches in transferring important knowledge to the players showed a significant impact on the players’ performance; iii) the coaches’ behaviour that were seen in organizing the players and training them for competition has impacted on the players’ performance; iv) the important relationship between coaches’ knowledge and behaviour that play a significant role in the development of the players; and v) other factors which have impact on the coaches’ behaviour during the coaching process.